I have been involved in some incredibly draining work of late, the most recent of which required me to be substantially bigger than I normally have been

For those of you that read in newsfeeders you won’t have noticed that I changed the template of the blog again.

It is to be both committed to the action and invisible enough that the outcome arises collectively, without personal baggage attached

At any rate, light blogging this month. I was holding space for a day long circle dialogue on Aboriginal child welfare in British Columbia. It was a full day with many important people from throughout the system who came together to look at how we might work at changing the deepest assumptions about the child welfare system to focus on interdependence. A very rewarding day, and a few reports are forthcoming, but I found myself deeply tired after this event. On reflection, I think it was largely a result of holding myself in solid purpose, and deeply committed to facilitating a process that took a conversation to a place none of us could have guessed. It was, in the words of Donald Rothberg, committed action with nonnattachment to outcome. And it’s a very draining thing to do.

When I say that the day required me to “be bigger” I mean, metaphorically speaking, that process work like this requires us to be both big enough to contain the energy and the edges of the circle, and small enough that we don’t get in the way of what is emerging. And there was another level at work here too, in which I needed to embody the values that were being articulated by the group. They were saying for example, that the Aboriginal child welfare system needs to be based on the assumption that no one person can make a decision for a child. For a facilitator hearing that who is willing to embody this deep change in real time, I was required to be in a present moment of reflective practice: “How can I embody this emerging value and validate the group’s sense that we need to base process on this value? Читать далее →